The new Kroger Marketplace shopping center scheduled to open next summer will be the company’s fifth store in Oak Ridge, and it could add more than 165 jobs, providing a “tipping point” for economic development, officials said Thursday.
It’s the largest in a series of retail construction projects now under way, including on Oak Ridge Turnpike and Illinois Avenue. It could be joined soon by the redevelopment of the Oak Ridge Mall.
“We are putting together the future attributes of growth,†Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan said during a Thursday morning groundbreaking ceremony near the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church. [Read more…]